How Can I Know I'm Saved?

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I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me and remain standing as we read from God's Word and prepare our hearts for His message.
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We are going to be reading this morning from 2 Peter 1, and we will begin in verse 10, and then we will pray.
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2 Peter 1, and verse 10.
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Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure.
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For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us your Word.
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I pray, as now I seek to give an exposition of it, that you would first and foremost keep me from error, as I certainly am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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I pray that you would keep me in the truth, and that you would even now begin, Lord, the process of conviction for the believer.
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Father, I pray that this would be conviction towards a closer walk with you.
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Father, for the unbeliever, I pray that this would lead to you opening the heart to faith and repentance.
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May it be, O Lord, that this message glorifies your name through the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.
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In Him we pray, Amen.
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You may be seated.
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Probably one of the most common questions which is asked of any minister is the question of assurance.
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Can I know that I am saved? Or some variation of that question has been asked by countless people through the ages, and it is a question which, as a pastor, I've actually become quite accustomed to hearing.
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It's one that I hear in counseling.
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It's one that I hear in conversations, even over meals.
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People will say, can I know I'm saved? Or how can I know that I know, that I know, that I know? And it stands to reason why this question would be so important on the hearts of people because there is nothing in this world which is more important than our eternal destiny.
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I remember a few years ago I was reflecting on the reality of entering the ministry and the pastoral ministry, and it struck me, and this is certainly not any type of self-exaltation, but it did strike me just how important this is, what I'm doing.
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As I began to think, you know, doctors, they save the body, but eventually that game's over.
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No matter how far we push the life, eventually that game's going to end.
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And we obviously appreciate the work of all the people that seek to keep us safe and all this, but we know eventually this life's over.
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And there's an eternity that's coming.
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And so we have to consider that the most important question that anyone could ever ask is, am I saved? Do I know my eternal destiny? Because really, at the end of the day, it's more important than a cure for cancer.
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At the end of the day, it's more important than national defense.
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At the end of the day, it's more important than any of those things.
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Because where we spend this life versus where we spend eternity, the comparison is not even to be made.
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This life is not even a flicker in the light of eternity, in the sense of the length and the depth and the breadth of how long we will be there.
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So it's a natural question, and it's not something you want to leave to chance.
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Not that it is left to chance in the mind of God, but in our minds, it's not something that we want to wait and see about, or wonder about, or live in fear of.
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And the question of can I know I'm saved, how can I know I'm saved, actually has quite a bit of history in the church.
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I just finished a 14-week course in church history teaching on Wednesday nights.
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And during that course, I didn't really address this, but really throughout history, this has been an important question for centuries.
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Christians have debated the question of assurance.
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Christian scholars have taken to right as to whether or not a person not only can know, but should they know that they are numbered among God's people.
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Some even go as far as to say it's impossible to know for certain whether or not you are numbered among the elect.
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Some people say it's so, you can never know.
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And even if you tried to say you did know, you would be committing the sin of assumption.
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This is obviously most concerned in the realms of those who teach that a person can lose their salvation.
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Because among those who teach that you can lose your salvation, certainly there can be no real assurance.
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If there was a mortal sin, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches, that could rob you of the grace of justification.
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That's what the Catholic Church teaches, that there are mortal sins and venial sins.
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And mortal sins are the sins that can rob you of your eternal justification.
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And thus you could live your whole life as a devout Roman Catholic, but yet at some point before your end, if you were to commit one of these mortal sins, then that mortal sin would steal from you the justification that you received in Christ, and you would be forever lost.
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What kind of assurance can you have in that? What kind of assurance can I have in knowing that I won't one day mess up pretty bad? So, again, this is a big question, and it's a big issue.
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And I don't think the question is, can we lose our salvation? I think that question is answered in Scripture.
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The Bible says, for whom He foreknew, He also did predestine to be conformed to the image of His Son.
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For whom He predestined, He called.
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Whom He called, He justified.
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And whom He justified, He glorified.
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There is none lost who are justified.
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The question is, are you truly justified? Are you truly in Christ? The question is not, can you be saved and then be lost again? The Apostle John tells us in 1 John 2.19, they go out from us because they were never of us.
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For had they been of us, they would have remained with us.
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But they went out from us to prove that they were never of us.
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That's the whole idea.
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If a person departs from the faith, it is a demonstration that their faith was never rooted in Christ to begin with.
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Jesus said there were soils that all received a seed.
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And some people spring up for a time, but they wither away.
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Because why? They have no root.
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They are not rooted in the faith.
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So the question is not, can one lose his salvation? I think the Bible is quite clear, though some would argue to the contrary.
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That is not my purpose to solve that debate today.
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We've spent time on it in the past.
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The question of today is, can and should we live with peace regarding our salvation or not? 1 John 5 and 13 says this, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
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The Bible is clear.
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We are allowed to know.
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In fact, we're supposed to know that we have eternal life.
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And certainly I could have spent time in 1 John this morning.
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1 John spends a lot of time on the issue of assurance.
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And I encourage your reading this week 1 John, because 1 John spends a lot of time on the issue of assurance.
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But I didn't want to go to 1 John because I didn't have 15 weeks to do a series in 1 John.
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I decided rather to preach from a book that I imagine most of us haven't spent a lot of time in.
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It's that little itty bitty book in the back.
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It's not Jude, that's the really itty bitty.
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But it's one of those small epistles in the back of your Bible.
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One of the ones that few people spend a lot of time in, but I think is so valuable and often overlooked.
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And that is the book of 2 Peter, 2 Peter.
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And in 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 10, we are given a call to confidence and a methodology which helps us to rest assured in our salvation.
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He tells us in verse 10, we've already read it.
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Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.
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Now, obviously, as a reformed theologian, when I hear the words calling and election, I get a little excited, you know, those are words and passages and issues that we obviously spend a lot of time dealing with.
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But that's not the reason why I chose this passage.
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Never you mind that I think that that's the only reason I would go here.
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My reason for going here is because of the words be diligent.
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The words be diligent are in this passage.
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And they mean just what you think they mean.
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You could go back and do a little Greek study and find out that be diligent in the Greek means be diligent.
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Yeah, that's what it means.
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It's one of those things we spend a lot of time discussing.
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The Greek means this and the Greek means that.
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Well, it means to actually think about these things and to concern ourselves with these things and actually put forth effort to see if these things are true.
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One of the worst lies that has been told to the modern church is the lie that once you walk forward and you take the hand of that evangelist and you pray that magic prayer that you never again must concern yourself with whether or not you are in the faith.
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Because you're in.
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You're locked in and not only are you so locked in that your ticket is punched to the max.
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Beloved, such a thing is relatively new.
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This was not how salvation was understood in the past.
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It was not how salvation was understood by the reformers.
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But it is how salvation is understood today.
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And do we know why it's how salvation is understood today? Because salvation has gone from being a life change to being a sales pitch.
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Rather than seeing people actually following Christ, we want to have large numbers that we can post in our conventions and say, look how many people we got wet this year.
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Rather than let's see how many lives were actually changed.
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Billy Graham, and I mentioned this in Sunday School this morning, for those who had to sit through this, you're sitting through this twice, I'm sorry.
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Billy Graham said this, he said, even in his ministry which was meant to go out and convert thousands and millions, even in his ministry, he said he would have been surprised if 5% of the people who came forward in his crusades were actually legitimately saved.
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What a shame.
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What an absolute shame.
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But yet this is how we approach the gospel.
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And it is a shame.
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So today we're going to talk about assurance.
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And if you haven't picked up on it already, I'm not here to give you assurance.
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I'm here to encourage you to seek your heart and know whether or not you are of the Lord.
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Because it's not my job to give you assurance.
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The Holy Spirit within you will give you assurance.
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You don't need assurance from a man.
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You don't need me to come down and tell you how saved you are.
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So, before going forward, I do want to address three things.
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These are not the three points of the sermon.
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But these are three things that I, in preparation for this message, I was thinking about ways that people confirm their salvation that is wrong.
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Here are some ways people confirm salvation to themselves which is wrong.
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So I want to share these with you.
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You may want to write them down or just keep putting them in your brain to think about.
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There's three ways I think people confirm their own salvation which is wrong.
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Number one, they take a universalist approach.
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The universalist approach says, well, basically everybody saved or almost everybody saved.
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Maybe Hitler and maybe a few other bad guys.
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They'll be in hell.
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But the vast majority of people are going to be in heaven.
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So I'm okay.
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I do funerals.
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I work for Corey Curlin Funeral Home and for Hewell Funeral Home.
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I do funerals all the time.
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And you know what I always hear in the funeral? Well, he's up in heaven looking down on me.
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And I know that's what we want to say to comfort ourselves.
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And I don't sit there and say, you're wrong.
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I'm not there to kick a person while they're down.
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But I do preach the gospel in funerals.
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Because I tell them, this funeral is not for the dead person.
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It's for you.
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They're gone.
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You're the only person that can hear this.
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So hear this now.
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Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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If you reject the Lord Jesus Christ, you will not be saved.
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And that's the truth.
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So the point is, this idea of universalism or vast majority salvation is wrong.
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And if that's what you're hanging on to, well, yeah, I know I'm going to be saved.
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Because, hey, I know there's people a lot worse than me.
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Well, that is false assurance.
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So that's number one.
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Number two is the legalist approach.
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The legalist approach says this.
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Well, I know I'm saved because I do good things.
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And I don't care what those good things are, whether they're religious things.
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If you believe you're saved by what you do religiously, we call that actually an extension of legalism called sacerdotalism.
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You believe communion saves you or baptism saves you or some other sacrament saves you.
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That is a false teaching.
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But there are people who believe that.
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They believe that they're saved through some action.
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Not true.
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But there are people who believe that.
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It's false.
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Thirdly, is what we call the anti-lordship crowd or the easy-believism crowd.
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And I've already mentioned them, so I won't spend a lot of time.
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These are the people that say all salvation is is a one-time ascent of the mind whereby you accept the proposition that Jesus is the Savior and you accept that in your mind and that changes you.
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Beloved, here's the thing.
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Salvation is a one-time thing in the sense that our regeneration occurs and faith occurs, but it grows.
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And if it doesn't grow, if it doesn't change us, then it's not real.
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And there's no reason to have confidence in that.
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There's no reason for you to have a Bible with the date of your salvation written in it that you go back to every time and look at it if you haven't had a life change since then.
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Why go back to a certain time in history when you believed in Jesus if you don't believe in Him now? Why would you have confidence in something you did before, thinking that in any way that it has made a difference if it hasn't? This is hard.
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Well, yeah.
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It's supposed to be hard.
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As I said this morning, if you're living your best life now, you're going to hell.
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That didn't come from me.
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I heard that this week, but I said I had to say it.
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If this is your best life now, then you're on your way to hell because we look forward to our best life to come.
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So all that is, in my favorite word, nonsense.
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That whole best life now mentality.
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So, can we have assurance? If legalism is wrong and universalism is wrong and sacerdotalism is wrong and easy-believism is wrong, if all these are wrong and they're not the way to have assurance, how then can we make our calling and election certain? As Peter admonishes us to do.
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Well, I want us to look at Peter's admonition and I want us to read the context.
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Because any time you read one verse in a book that you don't read often, as we said we don't read 2 Peter often, it would be unfair for us not to at least examine the context.
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So let's begin at the first verse of the first chapter and we'll read down to verse 10.
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You have the first word is Simeon.
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That is the Hebrew name.
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And then Peter, the name that Jesus gave to Simon.
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He said, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.
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Of course, we know the rock was the confession and not Peter himself.
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But we know he's naming himself Simeon, Peter.
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And he says, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of God and Savior Jesus Christ.
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This is an important Greek construction here.
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I don't want to spend a lot of time with this, but where it says by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
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In the King James it says of our God and our Savior Jesus Christ as if to separate the two.
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But the Greek does not separate the two.
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It calls Jesus our God and Savior.
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It's called the Granville-Starr construction.
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It's a very important thing that they didn't understand when the time of the King James was written and why it separates the two.
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But now we understand that when these two words are used in conjunction with the name of Jesus, it's calling him God and Savior.
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That's an important section of speaking to the deity of Christ right here in the first part of 2 Peter.
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Then he goes on to say, May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
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Verse 3.
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His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and great, very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
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Now, Peter is expressing in these first few verses what the reality of faith in Jesus Christ brings.
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He says that we have been given precious and very great promises and we have become partakers of the divine nature.
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By the way, we have not become divine ourselves.
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We are not divine.
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We don't have a divine spirit.
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We have the Holy Spirit within us.
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He is divine, but we ourselves are not divine.
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But we are made partakers of the divine by the Holy Spirit coming to live within us.
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This is what Paul means when he says in 1 Corinthians 6.19, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? You, as a believer, have been given God's presence to live within your heart.
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This is the gift of God to you.
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Peter is expressing to us the same things which Paul teaches us in the epistles, that salvation is a gift.
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It is granted to us from God.
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In fact, in 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4, he uses the word granted two times.
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This is stressing the fact that salvation is something that God gives us.
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It is not something that we earn.
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And I want to begin with that as our first kind of point in the message.
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I didn't outline this as a strong, broad three points in a poem outline, but I did add this as a note.
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Assurance begins first with understanding that salvation is a gift that we receive and not a wage that we earn.
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It is a gift that we receive and not a wage that we earn.
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The apostle Paul makes a very strong case for this in the book of Romans, where he says, if we said that we earned our salvation, if we said it's a result of works, then it's a wage.
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We earned it.
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He said, but it's a gift so that God can say it's not something that we earned, but it's something that he has given to us.
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This word granted is a hugely important word in 2 Peter because it's talking about God granting salvation to us.
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We know that salvation is not something we have accomplished on our own.
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And those who believe that they have are not only misunderstood, but they're in heresy because they are teaching that salvation is something that can be attained by works.
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The apostle Paul says it is by grace we have been saved through faith and not of ourselves as the gift of God and not of works.
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So those who say salvation comes as a result of works are not only at odds with me or at odds with you or at odds with John Calvin or George Wingly or Martin Luther, they're at odds with the apostle Paul and they're at odds with Jesus Christ.
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Salvation is not of works.
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And to say that it is, is false and heretical.
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But at this point in Peter's epistle, he shifts his attention to the subject.
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OK, you've been granted eternal life.
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You've been given these promises and you've been made a partaker of the divine nature.
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How then should this work itself out in your life? How then should this be visible in your life? One of the things that James tells us in his epistle is that faith that is not visible is not real.
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The way he says faith without works is dead.
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But basically what he says, he says, you say you have faith, but you have no works.
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I will show you my faith by what I do.
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That's a direct quote from James chapter two.
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You show, I will show you my faith by what? I can't show you.
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I can't open my brain and say, look, there's my faith right there.
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I can't do that.
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Such a thing is foolish.
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The only way that I can demonstrate faith is a life of obedience.
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That's it.
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It's the only way.
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Because, beloved, you can say all day long, I believe in Jesus, I believe in Jesus, I believe in Jesus.
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But if it doesn't change how you live, if it doesn't change how you act, if it didn't change how you behave, you don't believe in Jesus.
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No matter what you say, your words mean nothing if they are not also accompanied by actions which agree with your words.
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Jesus said you will know a tree by the fruit that it bears.
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Every tree that bears bad fruit is a bad tree.
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How, how hard is this to understand? But yet, have we not departed from this in our own personal theology? So verse five, Peter says, for this reason, for what reason? For the reason of the fact that we have been granted this salvation and we've been given over out of sinful corruption into this new life.
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We've been given this divine nature for this reason.
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Make every effort.
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This is very similar construction to the be diligent later that he says be diligent.
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This is he says, make every effort to supplement in the NASB.
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It's a supply and the King James.
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It says, add, I know some of you use different Bibles.
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I kind of I want to key in on a word here.
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He says, make every effort to supplement, supply or add to your faith.
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Virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
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You see, beloved, we receive salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
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But faith is not intended to simply be an internal thing.
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But rather, it is supposed to be something that causes us to want to do things which are pleasing to God.
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Peter says these things supplement our faith.
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They supply or add to our faith when we seek after those things which are virtuous, which are godly, which are loving and which build up our faith.
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That's what's happening.
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Our faith is being strengthened and our faith is being made sure we are adding credibility to our own confession.
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As he goes on to say in verse eight, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I love the word increasing in that passage because that tells me something.
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It actually was like one of those ding ding moments this week, light bulb.
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You ever have that when you're studying and light bulb? Well, I've been teaching for years that sanctification is a process by which we're conformed to the image of Christ.
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That's the classical definition.
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Justification is the declaration of God that we are righteous, the declaration of righteousness.
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That is a one time thing where God declares us righteous because of the work of Christ.
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That's justification.
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Sanctification, however, is the process whereby we are made and conformed to the image of Christ.
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That's the life change that occurs that comes after justification, not before.
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And I've always said that sanctification grows.
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I always tell people I'm not where I want to be, but I'm certainly not where I was.
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I can see Christ's work in my life.
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And again, am I perfect? Not at all.
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We'll talk about that in a minute.
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Not my imperfection specifically.
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But the point is, I see a pattern of increase.
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We should see the pattern of increase.
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And Peter says that.
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He says in this verse, he said, for if these qualities, the qualities of those things he mentioned earlier, if these qualities are yours and they are increasing.
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Then they keep you from being ineffectual and unfruitful.
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Beloved, are you increasing in virtue? Are you increasing in self-control and knowledge? Are you increasing in steadfastness and godliness? Are you increasing in brotherly affection and love? If so, these are indicators that you have actually had the change that you confess to have had.
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And if so, they will keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful.
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If a person confesses Jesus Christ and yet is not seeking godliness, what fruit is there in that confession? If we are not seeking the qualities which Peter describes, ultimately our salvation is ineffective and unfruitful.
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And I like what verse 9 says because he hits it on the head.
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He says, whoever lacks these qualities, again the qualities are virtue and knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection and love.
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He says, for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
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Here's the key, beloved.
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It's very simple.
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If a person claims to believe in Jesus Christ, but he is not pursuing Christ's likeness, even if he is saved, what good is his salvation? You say, well, at least he ain't going to hell.
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Is that what you were saved for, simply to keep you out of hell? No.
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If your answer is, I don't know, let me tell you the answer.
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It's no.
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You were not saved just to keep you out of hell.
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For by grace have you been saved through faith.
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And that is not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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For we are His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works.
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You were redeemed to live for Christ, not just to go to heaven.
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You were redeemed to be an evangelist.
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You were redeemed to be a missionary.
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You were redeemed to be a godly servant.
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You were redeemed to have a changed life.
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Not just so that at the end of your life you can say, my hell insurance has paid up and at least I'm not going to burn forever.
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You were redeemed to make a change in this world.
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Not just to enjoy the world to come.
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And he says, if we think that way, if we live a life that's not pursuing godliness, we're so nearsighted, we're almost blind.
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Can't even see what we were saved for.
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And this is why he goes on to say, oh, by the way, I want to make a point.
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I'm not teaching legalism.
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I hope you know that.
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I'm not teaching that you're saved by what you do.
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What I'm saying is that if you're saved and it hasn't affected your life, there's a good chance you're not saved.
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That's not legalism.
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That's just the Bible.
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Paul attacked the legalists.
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But he also says in Romans chapter 6 that we should never be willing to say that we'll continue in sin, that grace may abound.
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And you see, that's the mantra of the modern church.
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Yeah, I can go, I can receive Jesus on Sunday, I can live like the devil for six more days and then here comes Sunday again and I'll do what? That good Baptist rededication, right? I'll come forward.
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And Baptists ain't the only ones, but they're my buddies, so I can pick on them.
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They come forward and what do they do? I rededicated it Sunday by Sunday afternoon.
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Well, the world's coming.
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By Wednesday, we haven't heard of Jesus.
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By Friday, we're out in the world and can't get back.
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And then Sunday, we're back to rededicate our lives for one more week of, oh my goodness.
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Beloved, it's got to change your life.
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Justin Martyr, one of the early church fathers, said this.
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He said, let it be understood that those who are not living by Christ's teachings are not Christians at all, even though they might profess his teachings with their lips.
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I don't think Paul would have a word to say about that.
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I think Paul would say, yep, you're right.
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I think Peter would say, yep, you're right.
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Maybe not like that.
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I don't imagine Paul had a Southern draw, but I guess.
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All right, now we get to verse 10.
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This passage that we started with, we've built a context here.
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Peter has said, here are the virtues that accompany a Christian life.
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These virtues are things which should encourage us towards believing that we are believers and encourage us that we are actually believers.
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If we don't pursue these virtues, maybe it is that we're so blinded.
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Either we're saved and blind or we're not saved at all.
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Then in verse 10, he says, therefore, remember that word means consider all that's come before and now consider this.
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This is wrapping up what has been said.
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Therefore, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.
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For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.
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What are these qualities? These qualities are the things that he has just given us a list of.
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That's the qualities that the virtue and the knowledge and the self-control and the steadfastness and the godliness and the brotherly affection and the love.
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That's the things that he's saying here.
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He said, if you practice these things, you will not fall.
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And the fall he's talking about here is not falling into being unsaved.
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The fall that he's talking about is the blindness that he's already referenced.
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Because what did he say earlier in this passage? He said, whoever lacks these qualities is nearsighted and blind.
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He says, but if you practice these qualities, you won't fall into that.
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Beloved, most of you are probably familiar.
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But just in case you're not, I want you to turn with me to Galatians chapter 5.
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And I want to compare very quickly the list that Peter gives us to a list that Paul gives us.
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Galatians chapter 5, this is known as the fruit of the spirit.
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Verse 22, I've spent some time this week comparing these two lists.
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And I think that when you look at them, obviously they're not carbon copies of one another, but they're demonstration of the apostolic attitude.
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This is what the apostle said, the attitude that will mark a Christian.
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Peter tells us, you know, virtue, knowledge.
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It's Galatians 5.22, sorry, Galatians 5.22.
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But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
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And again, a great many of those are in the same list that Peter gave us.
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Maybe said a little different way.
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Paul says, against such there is no law.
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And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
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Notice it doesn't say some of those who belong to Christ.
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It says those who belong to Christ, those who are his have crucified the flesh.
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You know, Paul says, he says, I actually beat my body and bring it into subjection.
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I actually discipline myself in regard to faithfulness.
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How many of us are willing to tell our flesh no in regard to that which we crave so that we would be conformed to the image of Christ? Jesus tells us that the tree is known by the fruit that it bears.
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And if we practice the qualities which Peter outlines and the qualities which Paul outlines, then we're practicing the fruit of the spirit.
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We are engaging in the fruit of the spirit.
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Now, go back to 2 Peter, because I do want to just mention, again, what is context? What comes before, what comes after, right? Let's look at what comes after very, very quickly.
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He says in verse 11, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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How are we assured entrance into the kingdom of God? By the work of Jesus Christ and faith in that work alone.
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But how are we assured that we have genuine faith if our faith is producing a desire for him? If I see the qualities that Peter has described in me, I can feel confident that God is working in me.
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And if God is working in me, then I can feel confident that I am numbered among his elect.
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If I do not see these qualities in me, I have reason for concern.
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Philippians chapter 2 tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
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That's why I want to get these guys who say you should never concern yourself about your salvation.
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If there's anything that you need to concern yourself with, it's your salvation.
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If there's anything you need to know for certain, it's that.
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If there's anything, what do we come around that table for? Self-evaluation.
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1 Corinthians 11 says, let him who partakes examine himself.
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Why examine yourself if that evangelist was right? Who shook your hand and had you write your name in your Bible? Why if he was right, would there ever be a need for self-examination? If someone asked me, Pastor, I believe that I trust Jesus, but I don't have any confidence in my salvation.
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Here would be my response.
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So if you ever choose to come, if that's an issue of your heart, I'm not telling you not to come, but I'm going to give you the answer now.
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Maybe we'll talk about it more.
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But this is the answer I would give you.
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If you said, Pastor, I believe I trust in Jesus, but I lack confidence in my salvation.
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I would say, number one, this would be my first question to you back, because I would answer your question with a question.
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I would say, number one, is your lack of confidence based on unbelief in God's promise? And do you not believe God will fulfill his promise to save those who trust in Christ? Most people say, no, no, no, I believe God.
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I believe he's faithful.
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OK, that's the first question, because if you're doubting God, then I would take you to Scripture that deals with God's faithfulness.
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That's where we would need to begin.
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Where is your doubt? Number two, my question would be, is your lack of assurance or lack of confidence based on your own imperfections? If so, then you need to realize that you will never be perfect in this life.
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And if you are dealing with sin, if you're battling sin, guess what? That's a good thing, because people who are not saved don't battle sin.
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They love it to death.
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They eat it up.
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The sinner who loves his sin is not saved, and it's demonstrated by his love for his sin.
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If you battle sin, hallelujah! Galatians chapter 5 and verse 17, For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.
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For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
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How many of you deal with that every day as believers? You deal with a flesh that wants to do evil and a heart that wants to do for God.
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And thus you have this battle going on.
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This is where the third question becomes the most important.
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Because the second question is, if you come to me and say I'm so imperfect, I would say, Brother, so am I, let's pray.
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But here's the real issue.
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And this is the third one, is where I hope we get.
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Is your lack of confidence based on a lack of a desire within you to seek and obey Christ? For there would be the main concern.
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For if you say you have faith in Christ, but if you have no desire within you to conform yourself to Him, then you are not saved.
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I'm not here to give you assurance, because assurance comes from the Holy Spirit.
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I'm here to say examine yourself.
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Examine yourself with the question, do I have a desire in my heart for Jesus Christ? Do I have a desire in my heart to conform my life to Him? Beloved, I'm sad to say I don't know that we all do.
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And that's the scary thing.
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It's not about your words, people.
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It's not about what you say.
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It's about a changed life.
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And I would never encourage you to be confident if you were unsaved.
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For all I would do is give you peace in this life and eternity in hell.
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And I love you too much to do that.
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I want to pray for you.
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And then after the prayer, the musicians are going to play a song.
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I know normally we sing, but during the song I want you to meditate on the words rather than singing along.
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I want you to stay where you are with your eyes closed after the prayer.
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They're going to sing.
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And I want you to think about what I've said.
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And I know we don't do big invitations.
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We don't have Billy Graham crusades every Sunday.
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But I'm going to say this.
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If you've never been saved, if you've never seen your life change as a result of trusting in Jesus Christ, then you don't need to wait until tomorrow and you don't need to wait until next week.
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But if God is opening your heart, you need to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and you will be changed.
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And I call you to repentance and faith today.
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The Bible says that God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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And I call you to repentance today.
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Let's bow our heads and pray.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
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As we consider the weight of this important passage, I pray, oh God, that you would even now open the hearts of those who have never been saved, convict the hearts of those who need to be changed and draw them to you that they might know the peace of salvation, the peace which passes all understanding.
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I pray that none would be allowed to go astray, that you would call yours to yourself and save their soul.
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In Jesus' name we pray and for his sake.
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Amen.